Social media presents multiple ways for us to connect these days, be it across the street or across the globe. We see Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, etc… posts that make us feel connected to one another, relating to different circumstances than in our day-to-day lives. Social media now even affects the ways in which our business grow.
In this post, you will learn on how to be intentional in social media. By intentional, I mean that you need to plan on exactly what you want to do and what you want to accomplish. You need to define, analyze, and create a strategy on how your business will grow alongside your social media accounts as those accounts draw more attention.
Why do you need to be intentional?
With social media, it’s important to have a strategy on how you can deal with the competition and on how you can show your audience that you are unique and worth listening to.
As a business, you want to show your target audience that you have a different approach that can solve the same problems. Lots of people do what you do, or at least something similar to it. A lot of them have strategies, and a lot of those people are cultivating an engaged audience, building their lists because they have a strategy.
You cannot break through the noise without a plan. All of your marketing efforts need to work in tandem. Email marketing goes with content marketing which goes with social media and so on. If you are shooting in the dark with all of them or even one of them, your efforts are not as strong because they are not integrated with the rest of your online presence.
With a solid plan, you know exactly what you need to do. There is no uncertainty. “Clarity breeds confidence”. Wouldn’t it feel nice to be confident with your online marketing efforts?
How To Be Intentional?
Now that we know why we need to be intentional in social media, it doesn’t stop there. We need to know how to be intentional and how it can help us to engage our audience into taking action.
First, set goals. Not just goals but smart goals. S.M.A.R.T goals – Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, and Timely – is the first step in making your goal a reality. For example,
- Specific: I will build my list with traffic that finds me through Facebook.
- Measurable: I will drive at least 500 users to my website per week and convert 10% of them into email subscribers.
- Action-oriented: I will cater my content to what my audience wants. I will know what they want by analyzing the data being collected.
- Realistic: My goal is realistic because studies show that the majority of my audience spends a lot of time on Facebook.
- Timely: In 4 weeks, I will have achieved this goal at least once.
And instead of using “I want to”, use a declarative phrase such as “I will”.
Second, know your audience. This is very important because this will serve as your guide in planning and strategizing. A business owner should know his or her audience for them to determine how to cater their content to their followers. If you are a health coach, you should know the factors that would make you stand out among the other health coaches out there. You should know your target audience’s language, what they want, what they need, and how they want to feel in order for you to engage them to your social media accounts.
Third, you should plan what you need to post and what content you need to create. It’s not enough that you know your audience and you have goals. Once you determine these factors, you should plan on the actual content which will be the proof if you can stand out among the rest and that you are an expert. Once done, your audience will surely come back to your page as you will continue to engage them and provide content they love.
Finally, be consistent. This is important because your followers need to know they can count on you. If a page loses its hits or the audience isn’t engaging anymore, you won’t just lose followers, you may also lose potential clients or leads. So you should always think of ways on how you can engage your audience frequently, effectively, and consistently. Knowing the trend is one way but knowing and applying changes regularly is another.
Why is it not enough to be intentional?
Now that we know why it’s important to be intentional and how we can do so, let me tell you that it’s not enough to be intentional. Like I said, losing sight of your goal is one thing but losing sight of your goals and strategy is another. It’s not enough to be intentional; you need to track data, analyze it, and adjust it.
Find out what works and what doesn’t work. Analyze and test everything you do. For example, let’s say that you post motivational quotes on Facebook at 8 pm every night, yet you get no engagement. Maybe you should try posting those quotes at 2 pm and monitor your engagement. If 2 pm doesn’t work, how about the morning?
If you are getting a lot of engagement because of something you are doing, that is great! Take note of that and keep up the good work.
Don’t go blind with your strategy. It’s good that you have a strategy, but no strategy is perfect. What if one of your efforts is not making an impact at all? Then it’s wasted time. Your data will tell you what you need to know. However, keep in mind that amazing results rarely last forever. Trends change, people change, your business will change, and social media outlets change their algorithms. You must constantly adjust for that.
Mark what is working and what isn’t working. Over time, continue to track the performance of your efforts. If you see that something that worked well is slowly declining in its performance, it’s time to re-evaluate and see if you can or should do something different. If something just isn’t working after a long while, consult with an expert or move on from it. Your time is too valuable to spend trying to fix something not worth fixing.
Next Steps
Here is a list of factors that a business owner or online marketer has when you want to be intentional in social media.
- Create a S.M.A.R.T. goal.
- Look at your data right now. What content does your audience really enjoy?
- What is common among the content?
- Is the content that they are enjoying somewhat relevant to your SMART goal? If so, keep doing it and skip to the next step. If not, look at what is common among that content that isn’t relevant to your goal. Can you apply the same principles to other content? Say your audience loves your posts about strength training, but you want to grow your business to be more focused on nutrition. If you are posting quotes overlaid on photos of strong, beautiful women, try doing the same thing but with nutrition-related content.
- Start to structure a strategy around what is working. If your audience loves the beautiful wedding photos you post, then it must be part of your strategy. Select a time of day that you will post a wedding photo and how many days a week and stick to it. Then review in two weeks. Did those wedding posts continue to do well? If not, then adjust something about it and test again.
Now that we have discussed the importance of being intentional in social media, we can now go to the tactics that will encourage your audience to engage with you. One step is, planning what you need to post. Interested in learning more? Stay tuned for my next post on planning out your content!